Remapping the State: Inter-Municipal Cooperation through Corporatisation and Public-Private Governance Structures

Abstract

The institutional setting of regional and local government in Italy appears to be characterised by an ongoing process of reform and adjustment ever since Regions were created in 1970. More recently, provinces and Municipalities gained wide autonomy in 1990, and the constitution itself was revised in 2001 to set up what is sometimes referred to as a ‘quasi-federal’ system of intergovernmental relations. In this context, inter-municipal cooperation also has witnessed several phases and dynamics, ranging from (very rare) fusions, through single-purpose cooperation, to integrated service management (Public-public partnership, and consortia for the management and/or regulation of public utilities). More recently, and most notably over the past decade, inter-municipal cooperation has taken on a new form, consisting in the shared ownership in joint-stock companies. The so-called ‘corporatisation’ of public bodies, i.e. the creation of public-owned (or mixed public-private), private-law companies and corporations for the fulfilment of public-interest activities, has come to constitute a network of inter-municipal cooperation that appears to represent a shift from an institutional intergovernmental structure of cooperation, to one that is pre-eminently played out in the arenas of public-private forms of governance. The article analyses the literature and overarching trends in inter-municipal cooperation in Italy, and draws on very rich original data on the companies owned by Municipalities in six Italian regions to show how these companies represent the locus of inter-municipal (and multi-level) relations that go well beyond the formal boundaries of local administrations, and are often brokered by powerful private partners.

Key Words:

• Inter-municipal cooperation
• corporatisation
• governance

Notes

The total amount of Municipal associations includes 1,291 Communes of the more than 7,400 in the country and they especially spread out in some Regions, like Lombardy (60 cases), Piedmont (46 cases), Veneto (31 cases), Sicily (26 cases), and Lazio (24 cases). The average number of member communes of each Municipal association was 4.5, ranging between a minimum of 2.8 (Friuli – Venezia Giulia) to 7.1 (Apulia). In 2005 the Municipal associations administered in partnership 2,090 different front office and back office services (Ministry of the Interior 2006, 17). The activities jointly managed were in prevalence: municipal police (7.5%), human resources management (6.9%), social policies (5.7%), nursery and primary school support – like school bus for children (5.2%), secretariat (4.7%), planning staff, financial management and management control systems (4.6%), urban planning (4.2%) civil defence (4%) (Baldini et al. 2009).

Mountain communities are interpreted in this article as a soft version of IMC, because of their supra level nature. Really, they are regulated as a hard version, because they are structured

Their number, juridical nature and territorial shape depend on regional laws. Sometimes they have been set up as inter-provincial, in other cases they correspond to the provincial borders. Similarly, their juridical status is variable: they can be instituted in the form of conventions (mere agreements) or of consortia (with stronger legal personality) among Municipalities.

Source: research data, Consiag website http://www.consiag.it/site/

As for this latter point, it is worth noting that the president of the company is an influent member of the majority party, and he has recently run as a candidate in the primary election for Prato's Mayor (although defeated by his competitor).

Namely the Carlo Tassara S.p.a. (a holding operating in various economic sectors, which owns small shares of prominent Italian banks and Insurance organisations) and the Alpiq Holding AG (a holding active in the European energy market, deriving from the fusion of the two leading energy companies in Switzerland).